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Comment by m_eiman | Hacker News Reader

Like the government has the power or time to regulate the huge amounts of "chemicals"

How about instead of having "government" do the testing, we instead require that anyone creating a new chemical needs to test it for safety and publish the results (and raw data) before allowing it to be sold? Seems reasonable to me that you verify that whatever you're selling isn't dangerous (or if it turns out to be dangerous, inform the buyers so that they can act accordingly). Should be the same with any product too, not just chemicals.

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This is the EU approach (REACH: http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach ). It's pretty burdensome, and somewhat unevenly applied (lead has been phased out of solder, but not of batteries).

The "verify your product is not dangerous" has had strange effects, as people selling hand-knitted stuffed toys in tiny quantities have to work out how to handle CE marking requirements. This kind of regulation sets an effective minimum size on businesses.

> This kind of regulation sets an effective minimum size on businesses.

Exactly.

I find it funny how the biggest proponents of regulation are also those who oppose big companies as well

Because regulations are a very nice way of eliminating the (smaller) competition

There's no reason the government can't level the playing field by subsidizing the fixed overhead portion of meeting the regulations. They don't, and it's stupid - ever tried to buy or sell farm fresh eggs? - but there's no reason they can't.

Funny enough, eggs are the example used to discuss the impact of TTIP. In the US eggs at the supermarket are very clean. In Europe, it's forbidden to clean the eggs in any way. Often enough, you will have feathers and feces on eggs bought in the supermarket.

> In the US eggs at the supermarket are very clean. In Europe, it's forbidden to clean the eggs in any way. Often enough, you will have feathers and feces on eggs bought in the supermarket.

Cleaning them removes a natural antibacterial layer that protects the eggs, which is why the US has to refridgerate theirs and Europe leaves them out at room temp. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why...

Some of the unevenness is for occasionally non-obvious, but valid reasons. It's done in RoHS, too, for instance: lead is banned out of solder, but still allowed for some equipment, such as radiation shields for imaging machines.

The reason being that lead-free solder can still be used effectively. Lead-free radiation shields -- not so much.

The aim is to reduce the usage of hazardous substances to those cases where there's just no way around them, in the hope that it will make things like waste management easier.

Edit: CE marking requirements are also reasonably easy to work out. I know several one-man businesses that solved that problem without that much hassle, so -- anecdotally -- the minimum size imposed on a business is one :).

CE marking requirements are also reasonably easy to work out.

This depends very much on the product (first challenge: identify your product category in the regulations!). Electronics and especially radio transmitters have more confusing requirements. It helps that there isn't really any spot-checking: if you just write "CE" on the product and sell a few hundred units, and it doesn't actually kill anyone, you'll probably be fine.

The lead in batteries is generally recycled, lead in solder isn't.

Solder in electronic devices is also "supposed" to be recycled under WEEE. I'm not sure how well this works in practice.

That's a much fairer requirement (and it exists in some forms), but it has some issues

Some substances are not meant to be in contact with people. It would be even unethical/illegal to study the contact of certain substances with people. Short studies usually can't tell the long effects of substances.

Testing in animals also has some problems (cigarettes are safe for mice)

Longer exposures (in a factory environment) also cause more problems, and in the case of duPont they're not the first not the last to be involved in similar issues (of employee contamination)

Just to be clear, I'm not defending the company, but to think government can regulate all kind of new substances that appear everyday is just silly.

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